CLOSE on the heels of the White House announcement concerning the United States’ unmanned satellite project, the Russians came out with the announcement that they would also put an “automatic cosmic laboratory” into orbit around the earth.

The date given by the White House for the launching of the first American satellite was 1957. The Russians say they will have one up in 1956!

LOCK, stock and old barrels, Mrs. Mary Kidd of Walden, N. Y. ‘ has created an early American general store. Spurred on by a love of collecting antiques, Mrs. Kidd, with the aid of her husband, began putting her 1880 country store together. The little two-story building, once a barn and carriage house, sits behind her home.

The Frenchman’s eyes popped at American laborers driving expensive cars. The Britisher concluded that the U.S. production secret was our wives’ greed. The Italian went mad over supermarkets. Here’s how we look to Europeans sent here by ECA.

IT WAS an ordinary looking package in the hands of an honest-appearing man who stepped from the steamer Charlotte M. Hall onto the Baltimore dock not so long ago.

The parcel had passed the customs officials, and had, apparently, a clear road to its destination anywhere in the United States. Yet it contained destructive agents that bade fair to wreck hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property, and that might have left a trail of poverty and ruined homes throughout a period of many years.

“Frosh girls register here” is an official-looking sign that appears every September above little stands on the Cornell campus . . . unsuspecting girls don’t know it’s the upperclassmen’s way of getting a new date list.

Your own coffee van full of “Hobo Hash” is a cook-out-party special in Denver—it’s a huge hamburger covered with lots of vegetables cooked and served in the metal container.

Given all the steps involved, twelve minutes to set up a call doesn’t seem that long. I wonder what the call cost.

It’s kind of amazing to think that my iPhone has far more capacity than the entire “overseas” telephone network had at this time.

‘America Calling’

How A Transatlantic ‘Phone Call is Made

By A. P. PECK

1. Within an average of 12 minutes after an American subscriber puts in a call for a party in London, the connection is made and conversation is carried on as clearly and easily as if the called party were only a few blocks away. Behind this commonplace occurrence (an average of 50,000 overseas calls are made yearly, 60 to 65 percent of them being transatlantic), there is a vast array of technical developments and their application, aimed toward maintenance of service and speech quality.

German manufacturers make a vast array of products for the special tastes of foreign consumers

For millions of shoppers around the world the words “made in Germany” have always meant such ingenious, finely machined articles as are arranged on the opposite page. These products, once again available to consumers everywhere, still bear the mark of the clever and inventive German mind. The Niirnberg and Black Forest toy industries have repeated their prewar successes with steam engines, working cranes and remote-controlled automobiles and moved into new educational fields with plastic motors. Camera companies, which perfected their Leicas, Contaxes, Rolleiflexes and Linhofs before the war, have refined new models. New German ideas range from an automobile dashboard gadget that whips up a cup of coffee to a Plexiglas-covered scooter.

A discussion of the fears and worries that lie behind the tough bravado of would-be he-men.

by Richard Stiller, M. A.

Quite recently an acquaintance of mine was congratulated on the birth of his first child. One of the well-wishers—a long-married but childless man who was well-known for his athletic vigor and his very aggressive personality—said: “Well, at least nobody can question your virility.”

Obviously this outwardly masculine man had some private doubts about his public image as a 100 per cent male figure.